Grading Outlook
Grade premium
How much money is actually on the table.
What it measures
This used to be a ratio — how many times more the card is worth graded — and measuring it killed the idea. A card can be worth fifty times more as a graded card and still only add twenty dollars, so a spectacular multiple on a cheap card rated the same as a real payday. It is now the dollars grading actually adds, after every cost, which is the number you can spend.
$10 of added money rates 0 points; $10,000 rates 100. Each further point costs several times more money than the one before it, not the same amount more.
On one real card
Umbreon VMAX — Evolving Skies, Holofoil, asked at PSA 10.
$916.31 added over selling it raw ($2,404.28)
65 / 100
This component alone, before its weight is applied; the outlook is the four weighted together — all four on this card.
How the number is rated
Money moves by multiplying, so a scale counting in equal steps cannot describe it.
Where real cards land
Real cards, not illustrative ones: 524 card-variants measured on 2026-07-28, run back through the live curve.
| Added by grading | Points | Contributes |
|---|---|---|
| -$87bottom tenth | 0 | 0.0 |
| -$65bottom quarter | 0 | 0.0 |
| $24median card | 13 | 2.5 |
| $328top quarter | 51 | 10.1 |
| $1,627top tenth | 74 | 14.7 |
| $24,644top one percent | 100 | 20.0 |
When it has no figure
A component with no figure is an em dash and a reason, never a zero — and the card is still rated on what it does have.
- If what it sells for at the grade you named cannot be read, this has no figure and the outlook says so rather than guessing one.
- If what it is worth ungraded cannot be read, this has no figure and the outlook says so rather than guessing one.
- If what grading it costs you cannot be read, this has no figure and the outlook says so rather than guessing one.
Which of those it was is named on the card itself, as an em dash you can click. Every reason, and whose problem each one is.
The other three